


TFW You Roll A Crit Fail On Common Sense

by nah_tho



Series: Dumb Interspecies Relations [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Grinding, M/M, Masturbation, Orc Culture, Size Difference, Size Kink, Sort Of, Taako/Kravitz but background, criminal misuse of d&d canon, taako gets up to some questionable shit, taako's the biggest mess of all, this whole piece is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 18:07:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12216120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nah_tho/pseuds/nah_tho
Summary: Taako has never quite figured out how to just hit a dude up the normal way, but then again, he does very few things 'the normal way'.





	TFW You Roll A Crit Fail On Common Sense

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I'm gonna drop the neo-gothic notes thing for this one because I gotta level: there are a couple of things going on in this fic that tread fine lines or might catch people off-guard.
> 
> One is that canonically, orcs are basically shitty fantasy warboys a la Fury Road, right down to following their (literal) godking into a blood-stained Valhalla, and that's gotta make going home for Candlenights kind of A Time for Brad, 
> 
> And the other is that Taako has a shitload of very obvious trust issues (and, in my opinion, some minor but significant socialization issues) in the TAZ canon that I find way too interesting not to explore, so yeah, the choices he makes when he doesn't know how to go about approaching a situation can sometimes be a bit... questionable.
> 
> So yeah. Be aware. This is a weirdass narrative I've built. Also yes I'm aware I posted two fics literally a day and a half ago I just really enjoy writing this dumb ship

_Two Weeks Later:_

“You’re sulking,” Kravitz commented casually.

Taako dumped the contents of the serving spoon in his hand back into the pot with splash. “No,” he said, jabbing it in Kravitz’ direction, “I’m not.”

He was.

Kravitz took the spoon. “Have you considered-”

Taako whipped a hand up in the universal gesture of _we’re not doing this_. “I’m not,” he hissed, “sulking.”

Kravitz inclined his head respectfully and took over doling out sauce on their servings of fusilli as Taako threw himself into his chair resentfully. Taako glowered at his back, watching as he dutifully covered the saucepan and moved on to sprinkling cheese and settling sprigs of parsley on top of Taako’s creations.

He didn’t share Taako’s concern with plating, but he had long since demonstrated a deep respect for it.

After long moments, Taako’s agitation peaked. “Well? Out with it,” he demanded, and heard Kravitz stifle a chuckle.

“Have you considered,” Kravitz started again, setting Taako’s dish in front of him before seeing to his own, “that he hasn’t called you because you didn’t make it clear you wanted him to?”

Taako scowled and jabbed a fork into his meal. He had no answer for that.

“Someone has to take the initiative, babe,” Kravitz told him, too gentle for Taako to work up much of a temper over it.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah, but why does it have to be me, Krav? I saved the fucking _universe_ ,” he complained. "I took the initiative, my man, and I saved the fucking universe, and I feel like that should mean I get a pass on like,” he waved his fork vaguely before popping its contents into his mouth, “ _everything_ now, you feel?”

Kravitz was smiling. It was that weird, almost sad smile he gave Taako sometimes, the one that always made him feel like he was about to hear something he didn’t want to.

“I understand. But have you considered-”

Taako put his hand up reflexively, squirmed in his chair, and then made the universal gesture of _lay it on me_.

Kravitz finished his bite of fusilli completely before speaking again. “Have you considered that being a trans-planar alien who saved the universe may have made you… slightly intimidating to some people, babe?”

Taako sunk lower in his chair, stabbing weakly at his pasta.

“I’m not really sure there are that many people who would,” Kravitz said, speaking with a practised knowledge of his audience, “knowingly approach someone they’re aware could incinerate them with a single spell without being first invited to.”

Taako stared into his pasta moodily, giving up the pretense of even trying to eat it.

“And, because of the Day of Story and Song, everyone knows you’re capable of incinerating them. This one is on you to make happen, Taako,” Kravitz told him, too gentle again.

“Ugh,” Taako grumbled, and sunk so low he was barely peering over the table. “Uuuugh.”

Kravitz was still smiling at him. “Your dinner is getting cold.”

“I’m not going to call him,” Taako announced, apropos of nothing.

“Your dinner is getting cold, babe,” Kravitz repeated.

***

_One Week Later:_

He didn’t call Brad, that much was true.

In retrospect, he probably should have.

The second he showed up at the Bureau and realized he really didn’t have a good excuse to do so, he started to feel like this had maybe been a bad idea, after all.

He waved off Avi’s inquiries with a flippant,

“Can’t an elf visit old co-workers, my man?”

and strolled by as quickly as he could without looking hurried.

He realized something else as he wandered the grassy quad: he had no idea where Brad lived, or even where the HR offices were.

He was trying to surreptitiously scope out the latter when she caught him.

“Taako,” Lucretia greeted, smile genuine but dark eyes knowing. “I didn’t expect to see you here again so soon.”

Taako tried to wave his hand dismissively. He was afraid the gesture came out a little more desperate than intended, like he was trying to slap away a particularly insistent fly. “Got the itch, you know?” he laughed, acutely aware that his gestures were growing bigger and less convincing. “Sometimes you just need to hang on the moon, you feel me?”

The knowing look was definitely bleeding into her smile, now. “Mm. Hypothetically,” she told him, “if there was someone you were… looking for-” He froze mid-gesture. “-unfortunately, I would not, as their employer, be able to tell you their whereabouts. It’s protocol.”

“O… kay,”Taako said slowly.

“But as your friend,” she continued, “I think you should be aware that those whereabouts are not _here_ , currently. Hypothetically speaking.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” Taako echoed, and then recovered. “It’s a good thing I’m just here for walk on the moon then, huh?” Even he wasn’t convinced by the tenor of his laugh.

Lucretia was giving him one of her patented Looks. “If you ever need someone to talk to-”

“Yup!” he interrupted, shooting her finger guns for no reason in particular. “You got it. Absolutely. Uh-huh.” He was already powerwalking away. “Good talk, Lucretia!”

He thought he heard her chuckling. It occurred to him to wonder if people hadn’t been laughing at him kind of a lot, lately.

***

After two days of hanging around, he was growing dangerously bored, and in that boredom, a little too aware of how desperate his behaviour could be interpreted as by someone who didn’t know him.

Which everyone did, of course, because he’d saved the universe.

But still.

He hunted down the HR department with only a little help from the Bureau directory and slunk up to their service desk like a criminal trying to seem casual.

“Hail and well met, fellow citizen of the moon,” he greeted.

The bronze-skinned tiefling working the service desk took one look at him and then raised both eyebrows. “You’re Taako!” she said, sounding a little star-struck.

“The same,” he said indulgently. “So.”

“What can I do for you today, Taako?”

He eyed the employee card on her lanyard and then smiled at her with too many teeth. “Meredith,” he purred, “I have an inquiry about an employee here and I was wondering if you could help me with that?”

She paused, tilting her head a little to the side, as if considering. “It would… depend on the question but I’ll see what I can do. Hit me- oh,” she laughed, “sorry, I’m not supposed to say that- promoting a culture of violence and, uh, well, you know. So what’s your question, Taako?”

Taako looked at her, sidelong. “Promoting a culture of violence, hm?” he hummed. “Tell me, Meredith- is that one a Brad Bradson original or am I smelling the smoke from a different trash fire?”

She seemed a little unsure of what to make of the last part of his question, but smiled anyone. “It definitely is- good nose.”

“Speaking of the firestarter,” he said, leaning his elbows on her counter, “he, um… doesn’t seem to be around. Is that right?”

Meredith’s glossy black eyes were starting to look a little apprehensive. “Um,” she started, “I can’t actually… without their explicit consent, I can’t release any information about a co-worker’s movements or… activities,” she said diplomatically, “not even to you, Taako. It’s a privacy issue. I’m really sorry- I’d love to help if I could.” She looked down at her notes and then back up at him. “I could leave a message for him,” she offered.

He waved her off. “Naw, don’t worry about it,” he said, already turning to leave. “You’ve been great, good luck with-” he gestured at her desk. “-this whole business.”

***

Three days after that, a dragonborn courier came with a strangely flaccid satchel of mail.

He watched her go about her business almost purely out of boredom until he realized she was headed for the HR department, at which point he hurried after her, lurking in the hallway outside the door once he was close enough to hear voices.

The courier was laughing. “Merry, you would not believe how much better this place has gotten about deliveries since the Day, but I swear to all my gods, they still act like every package is just a tragedy waiting to happen,” she joked.

Meredith, for her part, was giggling. “How many this time, Gloria?” she asked.

“It’s the month after Candlenights,” Gloria answered in a conspiratorial whisper, “so _all_ of them. They wouldn’t let me through with anything bigger than an envelope- if you’ve got folk waiting on Candlenights gifts, let them know that they’re piled up in the hangar and to go give that… Javier guy clearance to release theirs, okay?”

“It’s Avi, but you got it,” Meredith answered. “I’ll send out a memo.” Even without seeing anything, Taako could detect notes of shy flirtation in her voice. “So, uh… you sticking around this time?”

“Until all those packages get released, sure,” Gloria said, and there was no mistaking the slyness in her tone. “It would be… _irresponsible_ of me to leave without making sure all of them get where they’re going, right?”

A soft, tense pause. “Maybe I’ll send that memo out tomorrow, instead,” Meredith said shyly.

Taako rolled his eyes so hard it actually hurt a little as they traded flirtatious goodbyes and took much longer to conclude their business than he really thought was necessary.

When Gloria, flirtatious dragonborn courier extraordinaire, exited back into the hallway with a goofy grin and a now-empty mail satchel, he cast Greater Invisibility on himself and pressed close to the wall to let her by.

He considered his options.

Casting Disguise Self and manifesting the appearance of an unassuming human mail courier named Calvin was easy enough. Fabricating the large fake envelope he needed to complete his disguise was a little trickier.

In the end, the second time he walked up to the HR department’s service desk, he did so with a huge fake smile and an envelope plastered in postage stamps Brad Bradson would have immediately identified as poor, and highly whimsical, counterfeits.

“Uhh, is this-” he started, dropping his voice in an affected drawl, “Is this the… Human Resources department?”

Meredith eyed him doubtfully. “Humanoid Resources,” she corrected, smile polite but perplexed. “We, um… we already received our mail.”

The Taako who was Calvin, human father of five and avid battle wagon race fan, grinned at her, all teeth. “Special delivery,” he hummed. “Expedited. Someone really wanted this one delivered.” She reached for it, but he shook his head. “Needs to be signed for, no can do.”

She looked unconvinced, but shrugged. “Okay,” she said, “uh, who is it for, then?”

He feigned eying it before tucking it back under his arm. “That’s a… Brad Bradson?”

Her mouth formed into a little ‘o’ of understanding. “Oh… okay,” she hummed uncertainly. “Um, Brad’s… taken a leave of absence. He’s not on the base right now.”

Calvin hummed again, but internally, Taako was tearing his hair out at how vague she was being. “Well, alright then. Uh- any news on when he’ll be back?” She started to frown. “Redelivery. I don’t want to waste anybody’s time coming back here every day lookin’ for someone who’s not around.”

This was, Taako realized as he said it, truer than he had intended. As a result, it did a remarkably good job of smoothing the suspicion and doubt from Meredith’s face.

“That makes sense,” she agreed. “There’s no… I don’t know when he’s going to be back, though. I can take a note, or, if you have a redelivery notice-”

Calvin clicked his tongue against his teeth thoughtfully while Taako tried desperately to decide how to resolve the situation without revealing that he legitimately had no idea how that would work. “I don’t suppose,” he drawled, “there’s any chance he’s got a… place I could go to, a door I could slide that notice under?” Doubt started to creep back into her expression. “Quality assurance purposes,” he justified, “if I leave that notice with somebody and he don’t get it, that’s my ass on the line.”

“Yeah,” she murmured, “yeah, I definitely get that. But I’m not supposed to…” She bit her lip. “Any chance I can ask what’s in it?”

He blanked, and blurted,

“Postage stamps,”

barely remembering to maintain his Calvin voice as he did so.

They stared at each other for long enough for him to start kicking himself for giving her the stupidest possible answer, and then she burst out laughing.

“Well, that does sound like Brad!” she giggled. “Oh my gods- oh. Oh my gods.”

He chuckled along with her, cautiously relieved. “Yeah, I was a little…. Who mails himself stamps, you know?”

She let out a sharp, high bark of laughter and then broke down into even more pronounced giggles. “I know, right? Oh, Brad. Well, gotta have a hobby, right?” she joked. “Ugh. And he goes on and on about how ‘transformative the evolution of communication infrastructure in Faerun’ has been, and… ugh.” She shook her head and then looked at him appraisingly.

He looked back at her, not entirely sure what to expect.

When she spoke, she started with a,

 “Look, I’m not supposed to tell you this-”

and if he were Taako and not Calvin, human father and battle wagon aficionado, he would’ve punched the air in triumph.

She was scribbling something on a small slip of paper. “-but I can tell you’re just trying to do your job, and I think Brad would appreciate your dedication, so… here. Don’t tell anyone I gave you this,” she asked, passing him that slip of paper, “or it’s my ass, you know?”

He took it and touched the brim of his courier’s cap. “Not a soul,” he promised.

***

It was Taako, not Calvin, who showed up at the door to Brad’s quarters.

They were on an entirely different level than either the barracks Taako, Magnus, and Merle had started off in or the expansive quarters at the base of the moon they’d ended up in, though the latter was probably because those quarters comprised the entire bottom level of the facility.

The administrative quarters were situated on a quiet mid-level: plain doors dotting long, bland hallways, indistinguishable from each other except by small nameplates.

He stared at the one that read _Bradson_ with a growing sense of surreality. He wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be doing. He’d sort of assumed he’d know once he found the place.

The utter blandness of it all fit his image of Brad prior to the events of the Candlenights staff party, but given the evolution of his opinion since then, he was experiencing some serious cognitive dissonance.

This did not, in his opinion, seem like the sort of place a ridiculously generously-proportioned, surprisingly skillful nerd who secretly worshipped an orcish sex goddess would live.

Well, it did, actually, but it didn’t seem like the sort of place where the sort of things that had happened and that he was very much hoping would happen again would be likely to happen, and that was what was really bothering him.

A door slammed somewhere down the hallway. He jumped, suddenly acutely aware of how exposed he was.

“Fuck it,” he mumbled, and dug Hole Thrower out. The space it created in Brad’s door was narrower than he would’ve liked, but not impossible.

He squirmed through it and told himself he was being neither desperate nor ridiculous.

The dim apartment he found himself looking up from the floor of was simultaneously nothing and everything like what he’d expected.

There were hundreds of postage stamps carefully arranged in a few large floating frames mounted on one wall of the entrance hall. Taako stared at them. He didn’t know what expression he was making, but he could feel that it wasn’t a pretty one.

The living room beyond was tidy, but not beautiful, with a few worn but well-cared-for pieces of furniture that looked strange to him until he realized why: everything was just a little bit too big, just a little bigger than he was used to, and it made the proportions of the room seem wrong, somehow.

There were long windows in the wall facing out from the interior of the moon, but they were all shrouded in dark, heavy curtains. The couch was slightly bowed in the middle, despite its heavy wooden frame, and the blanket that had been thrown over it did nothing to disguise that. The coffee table was too high, coming almost to mid-thigh on him instead of knee height or lower. The bookshelf was wedged tightly between floor and ceiling, crowded with books of all different sizes, from leather-bound tomes as long as his torso to palm-sized cloth-bound productions he couldn’t imagine in Brad’s hands.

There was faint but familiar smell in the air.

The combination of the wicked thrill of having broken into someone’s home and the fact of who that home belonged to were stirring something in him, and he felt his face start to warm as he finally identified what it was: a strange, completely unasked sense of sexual urgency.

He adjusted himself surreptitiously. It didn’t help much. “Hoo boy,” he whispered, padding cautiously around Brad’s oversized furniture.

The kitchen gave off an even stronger sense of strangeness than the living room: while some of the appliances were the size he’d have expected, others were not. The pots and pans hanging on the wall were all heavy black iron pieces with thick, club-like handles he could never have hoped to close a hand around. The utensils were a more regular, recognizable sort of silver affair, but when he picked up a fork, he found himself instantly unable to recognize it as anything but a small weapon.

The kitchen table was a slab of vanished oak almost as high as his chest, bracketed with two huge wooden chairs. He tried sitting in one. His feet couldn’t touch the floor, even when he pointed his toes. There was enough room on the seat for a whole other person.

He found himself wondering if this wasn’t the wrong apartment, and then, in almost the same moment, if it wasn’t just that he couldn’t even fathom how _big_ actually Brad was except when he was directly in front of him.

He adjusted himself again, swallowing. There was a definite, insistent ache starting to build between his legs. “ _Hoo_ boy,” he muttered. “Hoo… hoo boy.”

There was a hatch in the floor beyond the table. He took one glance at the all-too-familiar case of empty bottles perched beside it and scuttled out of the kitchen.

He knew which door had to be the bedroom.

He hesitated in front of it, wondering if he was being creepy, and then realized that if he was, he’d already _Goldilocks and the Three Bears_ ed that shit right out of the park by breaking in and poking through Brad’s stuff in the first place.

Maybe it was the thrill of intruding, uninvited, into such an intimate space, or maybe it was just the way the room smelled like something he immediately associated with sex, but he found himself sagging against the doorframe, face burning.

“ _Hoo boy,_ ” he muttered, sounding a bit shrill to even himself. “Cha boy might have a problem.” He grimaced. “Cha boy _deff_ has a problem. Hoo boy.”

It was getting pretty much impossible to ignore the fact that he was ridiculously, stupidly hard inside his underwear for no reason at all, so he gave up and palmed himself for a little relief, trying hard not to think about how creepy he was being. “Cha boy has a lot of problems,” he whispered, and then laughed mirthlessly. He almost wanted to call Kravitz, if only to have him confirm that he was now eligible for Grade A Certified Freak status.

The dresser was broad but simple, with fist-sized iron knobs on each drawer. They were filled with huge, heavy pairs of pants in a rainbow of uninteresting colours, or socks folded together into tubes of fabric as thick as his arm, or sturdy but uninspired rows of, he noticed, very generously cut underwear.

One, a comparatively long, shallow drawer at the bottom of the dresser, was filled with carefully-folded ties.

“Nerd,” Taako mumbled, trying to adjust himself without it devolving into rubbing himself through his skirt again.

He was trying hard not to look at the bed.

There was a closet set into the wall. It was filled entirely with tent-like dress shirts and work-appropriate polos and enormous knit sweaters, all hanging on wooden hangers that looked more like unstrung longbows that might be used as props in a children’s theatrical production of the firing squad Taako was going to throw himself in front of when this was over, because he was becoming painfully aware of just how far beyond the pale he’d gone.

He was trying hard not to look at the bed.

And there was, of course, the Candlenights sweater, hung neatly on a hanger at the back.

He was really trying very hard not to look at the bed.

He did not succeed. It took up most of the space in the room and was difficult to ignore.

The design wasn’t special. Nothing in Brad’s apartment had been particularly outlandish in how it was made or decorated.

It was always the _size_.

He was pretty sure he could get lost in the sheer expanse of bed that was happening in front of him.

“Yeah, no, _nope_ , this got weird,” he mumbled to himself, hustling out of the bedroom, through the living room, and into the foyer.

He actually had his hands curled around the edges of the hole in Brad’s door when he faltered.

As quickly as his pulse was fluttering in his throat, and as weird as he felt about the erection still aching beneath his skirt, he didn’t actually want to leave.

He found, actually, that he was very resistant to the idea of leaving.

He told himself it was because he’d gone to such ridiculous lengths to find the place.

He told himself it was because he wanted to crack into Brad’s home brewery, drink all his beer and eat all his food while he was gone.

He told himself it was literally anything, absolutely anything other than the fact that he just being here had made him so outrageously, impossibly horny that he knew without a doubt he’d never be able to look at Brad again and not immediately flush with guilt if he left now.

He let his forehead rest against the door, drawing his hands out of the hole.

***

In Taako’s defense, he really, genuinely did not intend for things to get so weird.

He didn’t so much as touch the bed for at least half an hour, and it wasn’t until a solid fifteen minutes after he gave into the temptation to crawl onto it and sprawl out that he finally caved and started touching himself, eyes darting towards the door, ears swivelling madly, straining for any sound growing in the hall outside, and face hot with shame.

He froze and held his breath every time he heard voices. He pressed his hand over his mouth every time he heard someone approach, and whined into his palm as he listened to their footsteps recede.

He was halfway to delirious by the time he came, and he came hard, biting on own fingers to keep quiet as shuddered through a white hot orgasm.

As he came down from his euphoria, he stared at the bare white ceiling above him, feeling a lot of things but not really thinking much of anything at all.

He found his way to Brad’s bathroom with very little difficulty and barely spared a glance for the waist-high bathtub within, methodically stripping and washing the come from himself and his clothes.

He wasn’t sure why he decided to hang them in the closet to dry, or why he crawled into Brad’s bed again instead of just leaving, but it wasn’t long before he drifted into an uneasy meditative fugue.

***

When he surfaced from his meditation, he half-expected to find Brad standing by the bed, looking scandalized. This was, mercifully, not the case.

The apartment was still empty, his clothes still very slightly damp, and the air in the bedroom still had the faint, shameful flavour of Taako’s own particular brand of sex.

He touched the moisture-dark front of his skirt doubtfully and then pulled on one of Brad’s shirts, folding up the sleeves so many times they became thick, loose rings of fabric around his forearms. He didn’t even have to meddle with the buttons- it was so comically overlarge on him that he could slide it on over his head.

In the wake of what he’d done, the air of the apartment had a sly ambience, a sort of sidelong _I know what you did_ that kept his face burning even as he told himself no one ever had to know.

He relieved himself in the bathroom, washed himself as best as he could without tampering with that enormous tub, and stole a little food from the cupboards and the fridge, bites of this and bits of that, careful to place everything back just as it had been, eating with the methodical paranoia of a mouse that knew he lived in a house with cats.

He was wandering back into the bedroom to see if his clothes were dry when the door opened.

He dove under the bed almost on instinct, already panicking over the evidence he’d left: the clothes hanging in the closet, the bag by the dresser, the hat by the bed.

The hat.

He snatched it under the bed with him before anyone could come in.

He could hear caution in the way Brad was walking- and it _was_ Brad. As surprisingly quiet as he was capable of being, the rustle of his clothing, just that much closer to the ceiling, and the length of his stride, crossing rooms in just a few short steps, firmly established him as Someone Very Big.

It was Brad, and he had clearly already detected that something was amiss.

Taako pressed his palm over his mouth as he heard someone rumble,

“I know you’re here,”

in a soft but not unthreatening voice. “Come out. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Taako scooted further under the bed as booted feet passed by it. He squinted at them. There was something off about the visual they were giving him. He couldn’t quite identify what.

He bit down on his hand as Brad crossed to the closet, heart thundering almost too loudly to hear his puzzled,

“What the…?”

as he no doubt discovered the loose tunic, softly draping skirt and silky underwear drying on one of his hangers within.

He watched Brad’s feet as they crossed out into the living room again, came back into the bedroom, and rounded the bed to where the dresser sat against the wall.

He saw when Brad found his bag- saw his thick fingers touch the fabric, inspecting without agitating.

“…Taako?” he said, finally, and the Taako in question, lying on his belly only a handful of feet away, closed his eyes and wished he had made different decisions.

It really didn’t take very long at all for Brad to think of squatting down and peering under the bed.

He considered casting Greater Invisibility again, he really did, but at this point, it seemed just a little meaningless.

“Hi,” he said weakly. His entire face felt like someone had taken a match to it.

Brad’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Hi,” he said. “Do you… want to come out from under there, Taako?”

“No,” Taako answered immediately, and without any hesitation.

Brad looked like he might laugh at that if he were less confused. “Taako, please come out.”

“You do realize,” Taako told him, faux-casual, “that as soon as I do I am going to actually _throw myself off the fucking moon_ , yeah?”

“I hardly think that’s necessary. Taako, please,” he prompted, reaching under.

Taako yelped and scooted away.

Brad gave him what was quite possibly the most exasperated look he’d ever received, and then just lifted the bed and grabbed him before he could dart away.

“Okay, easy does it, there we go,” Brad soothed, hauling him out from underneath before setting the frame back down. “Is that my shirt?” he asked, visibly surprised.

Taako stopped trying to struggle out of his grasp, going deathly skill to take stock of what exactly he was looking at. The reason the boots had seemed wrong clicked into place as a larger, even more wrong image came into focus.

“More pressing question, my man,” Taako said, very calm, too calm, his ears pulling themselves so far back they were lost in his hair. “Why are you dressed like that, and is that blood?”

Brad blinked, looked down at himself, and then looked up, visibly aghast. “I can explain this.”

“It is blood, isn’t it?” Taako hummed. “It’s blood. That’s blood.” For once in his life, possibly the first time, he found himself entirely without words.

Because he recognized the clothes Brad was wearing, was familiar with the streaks of red ochre and white ash across his cheeks and forehead, but had never even conceptualized that, under his polos and button-downs and nerdy glasses, Brad was even capable of looking like an orc usually looked.

And he did.

From the thick leather armour to the war paint to the alarmingly red-tinged splash of dark substance soaking into his hair and clothes, he actually, genuinely, did look like a regular orc and not a pencil-pushing, stamp-collecting nerd.

“I can explain this,” he repeated.

“Can you, though?” Taako asked. His voice was edging into shrill. He didn’t even care.

“Can you explain _this?”_ Brad retorted. His mouth snapped shut and his face burned. “I didn’t think so. How about I go first while you decide what excuse you’re going to give me, Taako?”

Taako wanted to melt into the floor.

“I’ll be brief: my father is a warlord. His father was a warlord. There are… certain rules the sons of warlords follow, and my younger brothers came of age this year, which is why I did not return home for Candlenights,” he said, voice peculiarly flat, “as I have in previous years- which is, in turn, why you saw me at the staff party.”

“Um. Okay?” Taako mumbled. He was very aware of Brad’s grip on his arm- not tight enough to hurt, but very firm.

“Despite the number of times I have told my father I have don’t think assuming his role when he dies is the truth I left the clan to seek, and despite the lengths I went to avoid participating in the Cull of Sons, my father predicted my actions and responded accordingly.” His smile was weird and tight and angry. “I went home to a blood tournament and have come back an only son,” he said, nearly conversational. “So yes, to answer your second question: this is blood. Your turn.”

Taako stared at him. “Oh. Woah. Wow.”

“You were thinking of an excuse to give me,” Brad prompted again. “I’d like to hear it.”

Taako raised his hands and shoulders in a slow, helpless shrug. “If you wanna wait for a good excuse from me, my man, we’re gonna be here all day,” he admitted.

Brad’s lips tightened. He sighed heavily through his nose. “Why are you here, Taako?”

Taako just shrugged again.

Brad gave him a patient but unyielding look. “There must be a reason for this.”

“I don’t know,” Taako lied in a whisper.

Brad frowned at him. “Please don’t make me force you to tell me the truth-”

“I’m really bad at this,” he blurted, and Brad’s eyebrows rose.

“Bad at… what?” Brad asked.

Taako gestured at Brad, at the apartment, at the universe in general, and set about staring fixedly anywhere but at Brad himself.

Brad sighed, and squatted down. It occurred to Taako, in a distant, absentminded way, that he was probably doing it so he wasn’t looming over him. “If you wanted to see me, there were much easier ways than breaking into my quarters,” he said gently.

“What? I didn’t want to-” Taako started to protest automatically, a defensive layer of disdain creeping into his voice, and then clamped his mouth shut. “I’m bad at this,” he repeated stiffly.

“I can tell,” Brad said drily, and his face burned uncomfortably.

“Can I have my clothes back before you kick me out,” he mumbled, “or is this gonna be one of those public shaming type things, my dude? Asking for a friend,” he added flippantly.

Brad actually did laugh at that. “I’m not kicking you out, Taako.”

Taako treated him to an expression even he couldn’t parse as the one who was making it. “I broke into your quarters and jerked off in your bed,” he told Brad, all in a rush and without knowing why. “And I conned your co-worker to do it.”

Brad made an equally weird expression. “That certainly is something,” he answered.

Taako stared. “Sorry, would you like me to repeat myself, _my man?_ We’re not talking me rearranging your furniture to fuck with you on a whim,” he half-shrieked. “Shit got _weird_ in here while you were gone.”

Brad, for some reason, did not seem to be as affected by the sheer volume of creepy behaviour that had just been confessed to as Taako honestly thought he should have been.

“Taako,” he said, smooth and patient, “I need you to understand something: I am an _orc_.”

“I’d noticed,” Taako said incredulously. “Especially right now- I sure am noticing that. A lot.”

Brad inclined his head in acknowledgement of that point before continuing. “As unusual as my… behaviour and temperament are as a member of my kind, I was still raised amongst orcs,” he said, “and there are aspects of my home culture… hm.” He stared through Taako for a moment before shaking his head. “I won’t get into details, but, well…”

“Well?” Taako echoed.

Brad looked up at him. “While I do find the behaviour you’ve both demonstrated and confessed to… certainly very confusing,” he said, releasing his hold on Taako’s arm, “I don’t find it especially worrying or upsetting. Just strange.”

Taako gaped at him. “Strange? Jerking off in your bed is ‘strange’?”

“Very,” Brad confirmed, rising out of his crouch with a soft groan.

Taako tried and failed to find something to say for several long seconds before shrieking,

“No, I _gotta_ ask- what the _fuck_ goes on with orcs that this isn’t a deal breaker for you?”

“It’s complicated,” Brad said patiently.

“Yeah, _sounds like_ ,” he tittered hysterically, “that much I fucking guessed, my _dude_. I think this one goes a little bit beyond ‘complicated’, if we’re having honesty hour here.”

Brad frowned at him. “Do you want me to be angry with you, Taako?”

He faltered. “Well… no, but…”

“Alright. Well, next time I would appreciate it if you used a slightly more traditional approach,” Brad said, seeming to consider that the end of that. Taako stared openly at him as he walked away, stripping off his armour on the way to the bathroom.

“Wha…” he muttered, and then raced after him. “Wait, sorry? Sorry, what was I supposed to do, just fucking call you up like ‘hey my man, hey, sup, I know I kind of bolted last time but I’m dee-tee-eff if you are so hit me up?’ That sound about right to you, my dude?”

Brad paused halfway through lifting his chestpiece over his head to look, sidelong, at him. “Yes,” he said, and then, when Taako gawked at him, sighed through his nose again and added, “may I say something uncharitable and… somewhat insensitive, Taako?”

“Go for it,” Taako allowed, sweeping his hands in front of him. “Open floor.”

Brad looked him dead in eye and said, very frankly, “I sometimes find myself suspecting that the only thing living so long does for elves is encourage them to make everything more complicated than it has to be,” before walking into the bathroom.

Taako literally could not speak for a solid five seconds. “Holy _shit_ , my dude.”

“I’m afraid those are my honest feelings on the matter, Taako,” Brad said, washing his face clean of paint with something pungent as the bathtub filled. “I’m very sorry if that offends you.”

He shook his head and then laughed. “No, it’s just… I didn’t even realize you _could_ be that brutal.”

“Everyone is capable of rudeness,” Brad said, sending Taako a piercing stare over his shoulder. “Some of us just put in the effort not to be.”

Taako sagged against the door frame as though he’d actually been hit, and it was only partially a dramatic affectation. “Are you a bard or a fucking _rogue_ , my man? Because these are some deep fucking cuts you’re dealing me.”

“I thought we were being honest with each other,” Brad commented. He sounded like he might be smiling.

Taako just sort of shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. He was suddenly very unsure of what it was he was doing, or meant to be doing, or had intended to do. He lingered awkwardly in the doorway to the bathroom as Brad became progressively more naked, feeling oddly trapped.

After what he guessed had to have been an uncharacteristically long period of silence for him, Brad paused and looked over in his direction again, eyebrows raised.

“Hi,” Taako said again, and tried to look casual despite how awkward he felt.

Brad watched him for a moment before approaching. “May I?”

“…Sure?” Taako mumbled.

“Lift your arms above your head,” Brad instructed. “Please.”

Taako obliged him, but not without first giving him a look.

Brad lifted the shirt over his head and off of him, setting it aside on the counter beside the sink.

“Oh,” Taako tittered anxiously, “is this the part where you kick me out with no clothes on, then?” It was meant to be a joke. It wasn’t one. Maybe thirty percent of it was a joke, max.

Brad treated him to a look of his own and then pretended he hadn’t said anything, which Taako supposed was fair. “I was wondering if you wanted to join me in the bath,” he proposed, running his hands down Taako’s arms, but very lightly, like he was trying to emphasize the fact that, in this moment, he wasn’t trying to move or restrain him.

Whatever expression it was that crossed his face in that moment, it must’ve have been a real doozy, because Brad immediately removed his hands from Taako’s arms and raised them, palms forward, in the sort of gesture a person might use to show a panicked animal they meant it no harm. “It was just a suggestion,” he assured. “You… don’t appear to have bathed.”

Taako squinted at him. “Are you saying I stink?”

Brad opened his mouth, but didn’t actually say anything for a moment. “There is an odour-”

“You’re saying I stink,” Taako laughed, incredulous. “You literally smell like a billion dead dogs right now,” Taako accused, “and you’re saying _I_ stink?” While wildly hyperbolic, this was not actually a wholly inaccurate description of Brad’s current state: whatever combination of substances had been marinating his skin and hair over the past few days, they were pungent in a way that not only invited disgust, but also elicited a strange, ambient sense of dread.

“Which is why I was intending on having a bath,” Brad said smoothly, “and why I invited you to join me.”

Taako looked from him to the bathtub and back.

Brad’s deep-set eyes narrowed a little, like he thought he might’ve spotted something but wasn’t quite sure he was seeing it. “I wasn’t making a romantic overture towards you, Taako,” he ventured. “You just… you need a bath.”

“I stink,” Taako muttered.

“You stink,” Brad confirmed.

Taako flounced towards the bathtub himself, careful to make a show of how offended he was by Brad’s observation. He meant to flounce into the tub, as well, but the height of it proved an immediate obstacle.

“Um,” he said, trying to figure out the logistics of this particular challenge without either splashing water everywhere or making a fool of himself. The tub was only half-full, he noticed. He could probably do a sweet flip into it without causing too big of a mess.

When Brad moved past him, stepping into the tub with relative ease, he was struck again by just how small he felt in comparison. He was suddenly very aware of being naked, and leaned against the edge of the tub casually like that had been his intention all along. He willed himself to focus on the tremendous weirdness of the situation instead.

Brad held out his hands in a gesture that very clearly offered assistance. Taako waved a hand. “Naw, naw, give cha boy a second, he’s got this.”

Brad waited, snorted, and then just reached out and hefted Taako up by the waist and into the tub, earning himself a startled shriek and an indignant, “I said I _got_ this-”

No matter how quickly Taako moved his hands to cover his tentative erection- which was, actually, responding to his being hauled off his feet with an embarrassing amount of interest- it wasn’t fast enough.

He could tell from the way Brad’s eyebrows started to raise that he hadn’t been nearly fast enough. He sank into the tub until only his eyes were above the water, willing it to sap away the burning in his cheeks. No matter where he put his legs, they seemed to collide with some bit of Brad, so he opted for crossing them underneath him and pretending his knees weren’t touching Brad’s feet.

Brad chuckled and then just sort of looked at him contemplatively.

Taako resurfaced to deliver a curt “what?” and take a breath before sinking back down.

Brad propped his elbow on the edge of tub and his cheek against his fist. “Unless I’m misreading the situation,” he mused, “you’re still sexually interested in me.”

Taako squinted at him, raised both hands from the water like monsters rising out of the ocean, and pulled himself upright. “Uh? Yeah, I’m still _here_ ,” he commented scathingly, “that sure was a tough puzzle you had to solve, great job, Bradson, full marks-”

“Taako,” Brad interrupted, apparently unperturbed, “only minutes ago I told you I used my leave of absence to murder my younger brothers at the behest of my father in the hopes that I will succeed him, which would involve also whelping a hundred sons by a hundred mothers and forcing them to compete for my approval by murdering each other.” His smile was wry, but his gaze was piercing. “In my experience, this isn’t a revelation that normally leaves people unaffected.”

Taako considered that, and found that he was a lot less bothered by the concepts being presented to him than he probably should’ve been. He elected to keep this to himself. “Yeah, sure, but you also said you didn’t want to and you’re not gonna,” he pointed out. “I kinda got the vibe this was the sort of thing where if you didn’t do the thing, they’d just do the thing to _you_ , so like… that’s not really a… murder thing. I mean, I’ve straight murdered a lot of people who were trying to murder me back, just not my own family.” Brad conceded that point with a dip of his head.  “And maybe a couple people who weren’t trying to kill me. There was- no, Magnus killed that one, not me,” he corrected, and suddenly realized this admission was earning him an inscrutable look. “Anyway, if we’re doing this whole _Who Should Be More Creeped Out_ Olympics thing, you know I gotta say it,” he said, gesturing too enthusiastically and accidentally splashing himself, “I’m _here_. I came into your place and just fucking… hung out. I slept in your bed. I wore your clothes. You might have done the criming, my man, but your boy Taako did the _creeping_ , so if anybody should be losing their boner here, it’s you.”

Brad had started to wash himself during this tirade, creating a drift of suds that was creeping across the surface of the water. He paused to give Taako a sly look. “I seem to remember you saying you did more than sleep in my bed.”

Taako tried to sink back down into the water to hide, got a mouthful of soap, and popped back up, spluttering. He looked first at the sudsy cloth being extended to him and then up at Brad’s smile, disdainful. “You’re the one who said I needed a bath,” he said, “I never committed to actually _doing_ the bath thing, that’s on you.”

Brad shook his head, but he was still smiling. “That’s on me, is it? Well then: may I?”

He definitely did answer that with a _come at me_ gesture of challenge, so when Brad reached for him, Taako expected the contact. What he didn’t expect was the purpose of it.

He responded to being pulled out of his sitting position and across the tub with a strangled yelp, grabbing at the edges with wet hands and accidentally stomping on Brad’s calf as he tried to regain his balance.

“Turn around,” Brad requested, “please.”

Taako stared at him for a long moment before obliging. Huge, wet hands guided him into a sitting position between Brad’s thighs.

When he felt the soft friction of cloth against his back, he jumped. “You’re not actually,” he mumbled, “going to like… fucking wash my dumb ass, are you?”

“Not if you do it yourself.” He could feel Brad’s breath on his hair. Despite the warmth of the water, he shivered.

As Brad’s shifted and adjusted him, moving big hands and the cloth over him in gentle but efficient motions, he found himself staring through the suds at what was, unmistakably, a forming erection.

When the cloth in Brad’s hand drifted a little too close, he covered himself reflexively with both hands. Brad paused. Taako felt the heat of a broad chest press against his back.

His dick throbbed under his fingers.

“May I?” Brad murmured, close enough that his breath stirred the hair by his face and made his ear twitch.

He nodded, slowly moving his hands away from his dick to grab the edges of the tub, but Brad didn’t do anything until Taako caved and mumbled, “Yuh, go for it.”

The proximity of him, the feeling of being enclosed by Brad on all side but one, was steadily coaxing his dick into a state only describable as ‘urgently hard’. His face burned as the cloth moved between his thighs.

Brad hummed appraisingly as he explored the length of Taako’s erection with the cloth. Taako shivered, clutching desperately at the edges of the tub.

When Brad moved on to washing a thigh, he groaned, both out relief and disappointment.

When Brad’s free hand splayed itself across his stomach, he sucked in a sharp breath.

He could feel the vibration of Brad’s voice through his chest. “May I?”

“Yuh-huh,” he whispered, and then whined as Brad stroked him, slowly, from base to tip, other hand still exploring his thigh with the cloth.

“Lean back on me,” Brad requested. Taako did, sinking against the body behind him bonelessly. His head lolled back against Brad’s collarbone. He was shivering again.

He barely noticed Brad abandoning even the pretense of bathing him. He watched the cloth floating on the surface of the water with eyes only open because he’d forgotten he could close them.

“Oh fuck, your hands,” he mumbled. Brad hummed inquisitively. He thrust up into his stroking palm instead of answering, and the chest behind him rumbled as Brad laughed.

He had a vague thought and scooted further back between Brad’s thighs, grabbing the hand between his own when it started drift away uncertainly.

He could feel the swell of a not quite insistent, but clearly very interested erection against his lower back, and paused, not sure how to do what he was trying to do or even what it was he was attempting.

Brad, fortunately, seemed to have a better grasp of what he was attempting, and shifted him up his chest with one hand. Taako couldn’t decide what he was doing with the other until he felt himself settling onto that same hard shape as Brad pressed the considerable girth of his erection between his ass cheeks.

“Is this okay?” Brad murmured.

“Yuh- _huh_ ,” Taako said enthusiastically, rolling his hips and making a little pleased noise when he felt Brad shudder.

Brad’s hand faltered in its stroking. “Taako-” he said warningly.

“Hmm?” Taako looked up at him through his eyelashes, finally letting go of the edge of the tub to snake a hand back and around Brad’s neck. He pressed back, sliding Brad’s cock against his ass with pornographic slowness.

The way Brad was looking at him was intoxicating.

“How badly do you want to fuck me right now?” Taako purred.

Brad let go of Taako’s dick to pull his hips back, hard.

“You have,” Brad rumbled, pressing his lips into the hair behind Taako’s ear, “no idea.”

He could feel the shit-eating grin on his face. “Oh yeah?” he prodded, punctuating his word with another long, teasing slide. “Tell me. Tell me how badly you want to fuck me, Bradson.”

“If I could be inside you already without hurting you, I would be,” Brad murmured, dipping his head to press his mouth to Taako’s throat. Taako gasped and shivered as Brad’s cheek grazed the thin outer edge of his ear.

The speed at which Brad drew back actually made him grab the edges of the tub again for balance.

“I’m so sorry,”

Brad was saying, almost at the same as Taako was craning his neck to look over his shoulder and asking,

“What’s up, my man, not feeling it?”

The pause that ensued with pregnant with confusion.

“Your ear,” Brad faltered.

Taako reached up to touch it, running his fingers along its edges like he might find a piece missing. “What about it?”

“I thought-” Brad started, and then stopped, furrowing his brow.

Something occurred to Taako.

“You’re… allowed to touch my ears,” he said slowly, taking one of Brad’s hands from its resting place on his thigh and bringing it to his hair, “That’s not _not_ a thing. It’s a thing. It’s fine if it’s _your_ thing, I don’t give a shit,” he shrugged. “Just don’t squeeze or pull on them and we’re golden.”

Brad stroked his ear tentatively, light-fingered enough to tickle, and with such obvious wonder that Taako almost laughed. “It’s so soft.”

“It’s an ear,” Taako retorted, “the only thing that makes it special is that it’s on _moi_ , my dude.”

Brad stroked his thumb along the edge and Taako shivered again as little. After a few long seconds of gentle fondling, Taako decided the moment was firmly past.

He rocked his hips very insistently against the cock behind him, now less firm than it had been, and felt Brad’s fingers jump against the shell of his ear. “As adorable as this is,” he said “-and it _is_ adorable, don’t get it twisted- you can play with my ears to your heart’s fucking content later. Right now,” he purred, rocking back again, “I believe you were telling me how badly you wanted to fuck me? Unless we’re giving up on that plan.”

Brad paused before dropping his hand to Taako’s shoulder and sliding it down his arm. “I wasn’t aware that we had a plan,” he commented.

Taako stopped, looked at him over his shoulder, down at his position on Brad’s dick, and back up at him again. “Okay, so that was _my_ plan,” he admitted. “You game, though?”

Brad’s hand slipped under his arm and across his stomach. He gave Taako a strange, secretive smile as he leaned in close. “That depends.”

Taako eyed him suspiciously. “On?”

The arm around his waist tightened, pulling him closer. “Tell me, Taako,” Brad murmured. “How badly do you want to fuck me?”

Taako felt the heat rise in his face. “Okay, but I broke into your apartment,” he repeated, feeling itchy and restless and very displeased by the way the dick pressed against him seemed noncommittal about being inside his ass. “The thirst is fucking _real_ , my man, can you not tell just from that?”

Brad laughed openly and pressed a kiss to Taako’s lips, though with limited success, given the challenges posed by their positions relative to each other. “The water’s getting cold,” he said.

“So… bedroom?” Taako suggested, shooting to his feet and wringing out his hair. “I was getting pruney anyway, and that’s a bad look.”

It was impossible not to notice the way the water level dropped when Brad removed himself from it. Taako shivered as the air hit his wet knees.

Brad stepped out first, offering Taako a hand. He took it, carefully, and then tried to navigate stepping over the edge of a bathtub higher than the length of his legs. “I’m gonna fall right on my fucking junk, I just know it,” he muttered.

Brad chuckled and held out his other hand to steady him. “I’ve got you.”

Taako did, in fact, trip on his way out of the tub, but he didn’t fall on his junk as he’d predicted. Brad caught him as soon as his foot slid out from under him.

Taako clung to him as he was lifted out of harm’s way and set gently on his feet. “Told you,” he muttered resentfully.

Brad laughed, and murmured an apology against his lips as he leaned in for a kiss. Taako crowded into it, pressing up against the warm body in front of him. The air was starting to feel very cold against his wet skin.

He knew Brad had noticed his shivering by the businesslike way he pulled a towel from the rack and wrapped it around him. It was a tender gesture.

Too tender, in Taako’s opinion. The sweetness of it made him nervous.

When Brad reached out to grab another towel, Taako had an impulse.

Brad’s response to having his erection unexpectedly fondled and licked was to stumble a little, catch himself on the towel rack, and give Taako an exasperated look.

Taako looked back at him, bent at the waist, dick in hand, and shivering as gravity edged the towel off his shoulders.

“I think we should try to make it to the bedroom,” Brad told him firmly, pulling Taako’s towel back up around him. It was enormous, and easy to burrow into. Taako made sure to do so while making his displeasure as obvious as possible.

Brad looked like he was going to say something else, but never got the chance.

Someone started knocking on the door to Brad’s quarters. It was an even, polite sort of knock- the kind he generally associated with people who were either afraid or unwilling to seem too overly familiar.

“Ignore it,” he mouthed.

Brad frowned at him. “I really shouldn’t-”

“Brad?” someone said from the other side of the door. “Avi said you’d arrived back on the base. I just wanted to check in.”

It wasn’t just someone. Taako recognized her voice immediately, and he could see that Brad had, too.

“No, ignore her,” he hissed, and Brad shook his head. “It’s just Lucretia-”

“She’s my boss, Taako,” he whispered back.

“Brad?” she called again. She sounded worried.

Taako looked at the pile of bloody armour on the floor of the bathroom and had an epiphany: he knew why.

“I’ll be with you in a moment, Madam Director,” Brad called, and then motioned for Taako to move further into the bathroom. Taako wasn’t sure when he’d wrapped himself in a towel of his own. It covered him from waist to knee, but nowhere else.

“Are you seriously gonna answer the door in that?” he hissed at Brad’s back, and then slunk out of view as he heard that same door open.

“Brad,” Lucretia started, “I’m sorry to have caught you at a bad time-”

“No, no, it’s fine- I was just in the bath. I’m so sorry for not being properly dressed, Madam Director.” Brad’s voice was smooth and convincing. If Taako had almost forgotten that he was a bard who used his voice as his instrument, he certainly remembered now.

He found himself straining to hear their conversation.

“No, it’s my fault. As I said, I wanted to check in,” Lucretia said softly. “From what Avi told me about your arrival, I… I take it that your decision to reschedule your leave this year didn’t have the effect you had hoped it would.”

In the pregnant pause that followed, the armour seemed to stare at him from the corner. He hunched down against the wall and burrowed further into the towel. He suddenly felt very naked, somehow.

“It didn’t,” Brad answered. “But I was prepared for that possibility.”

“I know.” She sounded so serious, so sincere, just like she always did. It made him feel even more ridiculous for doing what he’d done than he already had. “If at any point you feel you might need to talk to someone…”

“Of course,” Brad said. “Will that be all, Madam Director?”

He tried to be glad Brad was cutting short what could have become a long and involved conversation, but the truth was that the interruption had sapped him of any desire to bone down, and he resented that.

“Actually,” she said, and he wished he had been more glad of her leaving, glad enough to make her leave by way of willpower alone, “I know you’ve just returned to us and you must be very tired, but Brad, I really do have to ask: have you noticed anything… unusual since your return?”

Taako froze, his ears pulling back defensively.

“Unusual?”

Lucretia’s voice had an odd but very familiar quality to it: amusement combined with concern. “Nothing specific,” she lied, and he knew she was lying, because he knew exactly why and what she was asking. “I was wondering if, perhaps, anyone unexpected approached you or if there seemed to be anything out of place when you-”

“We spent a _hundred_ years together,” Taako shrieked, darting out into the living room to point at her accusingly, “a hundred fucking years, Lucretia, and you’d sell me out like this?”

Her eyebrows rose incrementally. “Well, I suppose that answers that. Hello again, Taako,” she said wryly, “I had noticed you weren’t in your quarters, and I am going to go right ahead and assume you were not somehow invited into this apartment prior to Brad returning to us.”

He squawked in protest, but she held up a hand and treated him to a stern expression.

“One hundred years,” she parroted, but with so much dignity that his face began to burn purely out of reflex. “I love you, Taako, but after one hundred years of knowing you, I do like to think I know you well enough to know that you sometimes fall prey to your… less commendable impulses. I’m sure you know which ones I’m talking about, but I could supply a comprehensive list if you’ve forgotten.”

Brad was looking between them with his hands slightly raised like he had the thought he should do something but didn’t know what.

Taako huddled further into his towel and avoided his eye. “…Like breaking and entering?” he asked sullenly. He knew a threat when he heard one.

“Like breaking and entering,” she confirmed, inclining her head.

“I can’t believe you’d do me like this, Lucretia,” he muttered.

She didn’t answer, because the next person to speak was Brad, and what Brad said was,

“Oh. So this isn’t a new issue for you, Taako?”

with a look of genuine concern for his wellbeing, to which Lucretia immediately responded,

“Oh, no, please don’t let him convince you this is something unusual. The rest of the crew and I have been trying help him with these behaviours for years. Of course, we’d all thought that maybe now, with Kravitz in his life-”

Taako pulled the towel over his head, not even caring how much of his junk it might expose. “Well, that’s Taako’s cue to dip,” he said resentfully, started to cast Blink, and then stopped. “Or it would be, if I wasn’t fucking _naked_.”

He didn’t have to see her to know Lucretia was shaking her head. “You really need to stop running away every time something makes you uncomfortable,” she sighed.

“Oh, like you can talk,” he snarled, peeking out of the towel at her and edging towards the bedroom. “At least _I_ never erased anybody’s memories because they didn’t agree with me-”

“I’m not convinced you wouldn’t if you could, but I do see your point,” she said, and made a sweeping _go on, then_ motion. He bolted for his clothes.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Lucretia touching Brad on the arm to stop him. “He’ll be back,” Taako heard her assure him.

“I deff won’t!” he shrieked, yanking on his boots.

If he’d chosen that moment to turn around, he would’ve seen her roll her eyes discreetly and then mouth,

“No, he’ll be back,”

to Brad again.

But he didn’t, because what he did do was grab his bag, throw himself out the bedroom window, and cast Levitate.

**Author's Note:**

> ORC FACTS:
> 
> \- okay but the cull of sons thing isn't D&D canon, it's just upsettingly plausible because murdering your siblings to become head of the family is a thing that historically has happened and does happen in culturally violent patrilineal societies, and a culture that glamourizes violence and death as much as orc culture does probably would just make it an Official Thing. Poor Brad, the dude just wants to collect stamps and brew beer and chill on the moon and fuck a cute, weird elf  
> \- oh yeah I nearly forgot: orcs straight up collect elf ears and offer them to Grummsh, their main god. So Brad assuming Taako isn't going to want him anywhere near his is really, really not that weird
> 
> SPELL FACTS:
> 
> \- Levitate requires a leather loop or a piece of gold wire bent into a cup but I couldn't be fucking bothered tbh


End file.
